New Trusted Content: Next Step

After listening to the Nihilism series at FDR (Video and Bronze+ podcasts), I realized that I was at least something of a nihilist, in practice, without even knowing it.

The event I point to is the Sunday show right after Universally Preferable Behavior came out, in which I basically said of the book, “It’s nice,” or “It’s interesting.” I remember that feeling excitement (or, rather, anything) about the book was difficult, and it took me a number of months before I finally had a moment where it suddenly made sense, consciously.

Prior to FDR (and certainly for a while afterwards), I basically lived in a world where there were no absolutes, everything was opinion, and everything was a sales job. I just don’t think I had quite intellectualized it to that point, but was just living from moment to moment at that time. That is, I couldn’t explain why I didn’t believe, I just didn’t. When challenged, I seized.

The religiosity in my past was exceptionally nihilistic in terms of my desire for moral behavior being used to control and attack me, and though I hadn’t intellectualized it, I definitely put morality into an entirely relativistic category. As part of my deconversion from Christianity, I took my cues about behaving morally from the parts of my culture that I liked (which included “sex is not sinful” but also “taxation is moral, but not too much”).

Of course, the moral relativism wasn’t borne completely out of religiosity as my parents were not overtly religious my entire life. My father only became overtly religious at some point in my mid-childhood, in which the whole set of moral rules suddenly changed. Now, attending church was “good,” not wanting to attend church was “bad,” where before there was no moral category regarding attending church whatsoever.

There are more examples but I am a bit pressed for time at the moment. Thanks for reading!